AP US History Unit 1

Atlantic World

The growing network linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas after sustained Atlantic contact. People, goods, crops, animals, diseases, ideas, and labor systems moved through this network.

Colonization

The process by which a country establishes settlements in another region and extends political, economic, and cultural control over the land and its people.

Coerced labor

Work performed because people are forced or compelled to labor rather than choosing freely. Spanish colonies relied heavily on coerced Indigenous labor and later enslaved African labor.

Jamestown

English settlement founded in Virginia in 1607. It became the first permanent English settlement in what became the United States and marks the end of APUSH Period 1.

Land bridge (Beringia)

A land connection that once joined Siberia and Alaska during the Ice Age. Early peoples migrated into the Americas through this region over thousands of years.

Maize

Corn, first cultivated in present-day Mexico and gradually spread northward. Its reliable food supply supported larger populations, permanent settlements, trade, and more complex societies.

Agricultural surplus

Food produced beyond a community's immediate needs. Surpluses can support population growth, trade, specialized jobs, and more complex political and social systems.

Labor specialization

The development of different jobs or roles within a society because not everyone must spend all of their time producing food.

Hohokam

Indigenous people of the Southwest who adapted to an arid environment by building extensive irrigation canals and farming crops such as maize.

Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi)

Indigenous people of the Southwest who built permanent communities, including cliff dwellings and multistory structures, and relied on agriculture adapted to a dry environment.

Pueblo peoples

Indigenous peoples of the Southwest who developed permanent agricultural communities, used irrigation, and built settlements from materials such as stone and adobe.

Great Basin

Dry region of the interior West where scarce and scattered resources encouraged many Indigenous groups to live in small communities and move seasonally to find food and water.

Great Plains

Grassland region where Indigenous societies used a variety of strategies, including buffalo hunting, trade, seasonal movement, and agriculture near river valleys.

Mound builders

Indigenous societies of the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys that constructed large earthen mounds for political, religious, burial, and community purposes.

Cahokia

Large Mississippian city near present-day St. Louis that flourished around 1050-1200 CE. It was a major political, religious, agricultural, and trading center known for monumental earthen mounds.

Longhouse

A long timber-and-bark dwelling used by some Indigenous peoples of the Northeast to house multiple related families.

Matrilineal

A social system in which family identity, inheritance, or clan membership is traced through the mother's family line.

Iroquois Confederacy / Great League of Peace

A political alliance of Haudenosaunee nations in the Northeast that coordinated diplomacy, warfare, and relations with outsiders while preserving the independence of member nations.

Resource management

The deliberate use and shaping of the environment to sustain communities, such as irrigation, controlled burning, food storage, hunting practices, and management of useful plants.

Controlled burning

The intentional use of small, managed fires to clear land, encourage useful plants, improve hunting grounds, and shape local ecosystems.

Aztec Empire

Powerful Mesoamerican empire centered in central Mexico. Its capital was Tenochtitlán, and it was conquered by Hernán Cortés and Indigenous allies in the early 1500s.

Tenochtitlán

Capital of the Aztec Empire, built on islands in Lake Texcoco at the site of present-day Mexico City. It was a large and highly organized urban center.

Inca Empire

Large empire based in the Andes of South America. Francisco Pizarro and Spanish forces conquered it in the 1530s with the help of disease, military advantages, and internal divisions.

Renaissance

European intellectual and cultural revival that encouraged greater interest in geography, science, classical learning, and the spread of knowledge, helping create conditions for exploration.

Nation-state

A political state with a centralized government ruling a defined territory. Stronger European nation-states were able to finance overseas exploration and compete for empires.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Portuguese prince who supported voyages, navigation, and exploration along the west coast of Africa, helping Portugal become an early leader in Atlantic exploration.

Caravel

A small, maneuverable sailing ship used by Portuguese and other European explorers that was well suited for long-distance ocean travel.

Sailing compass

Navigational tool using Earth's magnetic field to show direction. It helped European sailors navigate more confidently on long ocean voyages.

Printing press

Technology that made written information faster and cheaper to reproduce, allowing maps, travel reports, and geographic knowledge to spread more widely.

Gunpowder

Military technology adopted by Europeans that increased the effectiveness of firearms and artillery and later aided conquest in the Americas.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese explorer who reached India by sailing around Africa in 1498, demonstrating a direct European sea route to Asian trade.

Christopher Columbus

Italian navigator sponsored by Spain whose 1492 voyage across the Atlantic began sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, leading to exploration, conquest, colonization, and the Columbian Exchange.

Ferdinand and Isabella

Spanish monarchs who completed the Reconquista in 1492 and sponsored Christopher Columbus's first voyage across the Atlantic.

Reconquista

The centuries-long Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rulers, completed by Spain in 1492. It strengthened Spanish monarchy and contributed to religious and imperial expansion.

Treaty of Tordesillas

1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal, backed by the pope, that divided newly claimed lands outside Europe between the two powers.

John Cabot

Italian navigator sailing for England who explored the North Atlantic coast near Newfoundland in 1497, giving England a basis for later territorial claims.

Protestant Reformation

Religious movement beginning in the 1500s that challenged the Catholic Church and divided western Christianity, intensifying religious rivalry among European powers.

Imperial competition

Rivalry among European states for wealth, trade, territory, strategic advantage, and religious influence overseas.

Roanoke

English colony attempted on Roanoke Island in the 1580s that disappeared. Its failure showed the difficulty of early English colonization before Jamestown.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of plants, animals, diseases, people, technologies, and cultural practices between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after sustained contact began in 1492.

Epidemic

A rapid outbreak of disease affecting many people in a community or region. European diseases such as smallpox caused devastating epidemics among Indigenous peoples.

Acquired immunity

Resistance to a disease developed after previous exposure. Many Europeans had some immunity to Old World diseases that Indigenous Americans had never encountered.

Demographic collapse

A severe decline in population. In the Americas, disease, warfare, forced labor, displacement, and social disruption caused catastrophic Indigenous population losses after contact.

Conquistador

Spanish term for a conqueror; used for Spanish soldiers and leaders who conquered Indigenous empires and claimed territory in the Americas.

Hernán Cortés

Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztec Empire beginning in 1519 with the help of Indigenous allies, disease, and Spanish military technology.

Indigenous alliances

Political and military partnerships formed by Native peoples with Europeans or with other Native groups. Cortés, for example, relied on Indigenous enemies of the Aztecs during the conquest of Mexico.

Francisco Pizarro

Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s.

Capitalism

Economic system based on private ownership, investment, markets, and the pursuit of profit. Atlantic trade and colonial ventures contributed to its expansion in Europe.

Joint-stock company

Business organization in which investors pool money and share risks and profits. It helped finance expensive overseas trade and colonization.

Encomienda

Spanish system in which the crown granted a colonist the right to demand labor or tribute from Indigenous people in a particular area; in practice it often produced severe exploitation.

Encomendero

Spanish colonist who received an encomienda and therefore had the right to collect Indigenous labor or tribute while supposedly providing protection and Christian instruction.

Tribute

Goods, crops, money, or labor demanded from a subject population. Spanish colonists often required Indigenous communities to provide tribute.

Asiento

Spanish system that licensed merchants to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies, usually in return for payments or taxes to the Spanish crown.

Atlantic slave trade

Forced transportation and sale of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to labor in the Americas. It expanded as European colonial economies demanded workers.

Middle Passage

The brutal Atlantic voyage that carried enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas as part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Spanish caste system

Colonial social hierarchy that ranked people largely by ancestry and birthplace, linking racial classification to status, rights, power, and economic opportunity.

Peninsulares

People born in Spain who lived in the Spanish colonies. They generally held the highest positions in the colonial caste hierarchy.

Criollos / Creoles

People of European ancestry born in the Americas. They were usually socially privileged but ranked below Spain-born peninsulares in the colonial hierarchy.

Mestizos

People of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry in Spanish America.

Mulattoes

Historical Spanish colonial term for people of mixed African and European ancestry.

Repartimiento system

Spanish labor system that replaced encomienda in some areas. Indigenous people were legally free but required to provide a fixed amount of labor for Spanish employers.

Bartolomé de las Casas

Spanish Catholic priest who condemned the brutal treatment and enslavement of Indigenous peoples and argued that conversion should occur through persuasion rather than force.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

Spanish scholar who defended conquest and argued that Spanish civilization was superior and that forced rule over Indigenous peoples could be justified.

New Laws of 1542

Spanish reforms influenced in part by criticism from Las Casas that attempted to limit the enslavement and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and weaken abuses of encomienda.

Valladolid Debate

1550-1551 debate in Spain over the morality of conquest, the status of Indigenous peoples, and whether force could be justified in spreading Spanish rule and Christianity.

Black Legend

Idea that Spain was uniquely cruel and oppressive in its treatment of Indigenous peoples. Accounts of Spanish abuses helped rival European powers criticize Spanish colonization.

Sovereignty

The authority of a people or government to rule itself and control its own land and political decisions. Native nations tried to defend their sovereignty as European settlement expanded.

Syncretism

The blending of elements from different religious or cultural traditions into new practices. Contact among Indigenous, European, and African peoples produced syncretic cultures in the Americas.

Racial justification

The use of claims about supposed racial differences or hierarchy to defend conquest, forced labor, slavery, or unequal treatment.